If the answer is this question (A diehard with a vengeance?), then could the Jeopardy question which begets this answer be: “Who is Monica Goodling“?

Goodling made her 1115 debut on the morning of March 26. The world’s first real introduction to Goodling came later that same day, when her lawyer, John Dowd, made a loud public announcement that Goodling would take the Fifth before the Senate Judiciary Committee. And we’ll come back to that first public introduction in just a moment. Let’s start, though, with Friday’s Bloomberg story that gives us a behind-the-scenes glimpse of an earlier Goodling:

A former U.S. Justice Department official and central figure in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys tearfully told a colleague two months ago her government career probably was over as the matter was about to erupt into a political storm, according to closed-door congressional testimony.

Monica Goodling, at the time an aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, sobbed for 45 minutes in the office of career Justice Department official David Margolis on March 8 as she related her fears that she would have to quit, according to congressional aides briefed on Margolis’s private testimony to House and Senate investigators.
[...]
Margolis testified in private that he tried to console Goodling and listened to her discuss her personal life, a congressional aide said. He recalled telling a colleague that he was concerned about Goodling’s emotional state, the aide said.

Some of you loyal readers are men, of course, so you may have little first-hand experience in such matters. Let us, therefore, stipulate that 45 minutes is a lot of sobbing. A heck of a lot of sobbing. Even for a hysterical woman.

In her first public introduction, about three weeks later, Goodling insisted on comparing herself to I. Lewis Libby:

The potential for taking the blame for the department’s bungled response “is very real,” Dowd said. “One need look no further than the recent circumstances and proceedings involving Lewis Libby,” he said, a reference to the recent conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff in the CIA leak case.

At the time, she was roundly laughed at, by all the usual suspects, because the comparison made so little sense. Scooter went down for deliberately lying to the grand jury. Goodling was trying to say she apprehended “legal jeopardy … from even her most truthful and accurate testimony”, although she had actually, of course, done nothing wrong at all, broken no laws, committed no crime. So she invited a pretty loud chorus of “Get real!”

But at the time we were trying to make sense of her claim. And expressing our opinions on her self-proclaimed innocence of all wrong-doing. Now we’re trying to make sense of her state of mind. And I think that Libby reference speaks volumes to her state of mind. I think it also illuminates her breakdown in front of Margolis.

All the details that have emerged of Goodling’s role in the firing of the U.S. Attorneys (I would say “eight U.S. Attorneys”, but between those who were actually fired, those who were pushed to resign “voluntarily”, and those whose palms may have been crossed with silver, no one is really sure what the count is any more, how many prosecutors were made to part company with the “Justice” Department by Sampson and Goodling at the behest of Karl Rove and Harriet Meirs, and entirely without the blessings of either George “The Decider” Bush or Alberto “I don’t recall, Senator” Gonzales), all the details that have emerged show her to be a willing and enthusiastic participant in the Justice Department shenanigans. So maybe we can stipulate that the “diehard” label is hardly in dispute.

Goodling’s breakdown in Margolis’ office, and the “I will not take the rap for this a la Scooter Libby” comments attributed to her, seem to make it clear that at the testing moment when she was given the chance to prove how good a Bushie team-player she was, she chickened out, finding in her pious little heart neither loyalty nor trust. What swam to the surface was the “I” that is always in “team”, no matter what anyone tries to tell you.

And who is to say that Goodling’s reaction wasn’t entirely justified by the totality of her work experience at the Justice Department? She had, after all, personally participated in the wholesale sacrifice of loyal Republican appointees.

Rightly or wrongly, the main lesson she seems to have taken away from the Scooter Libby case was that she could expect no loyalty from them, those nameless deciders and enablers who would determine who was to be protected, and who was to be thrown under the bus. (In the time of Bush, perhaps that’s what the phrase “the wheels of justice” has come to mean?) Except that this didn’t even look like being a bus. More like a fully laden 18-wheeler. With snow tires.

And so Goodling did what she thought was in her best interests. She cut and ran. Instead of trusting the White House machinery to protect her, she opted for the protections of the Fifth Amendment. (Maybe she had reason to believe that, once again, the White House machinery would be working full-time to protect Karl Rove? That they would have their hands pretty full with that?)

In the process, she was perceived to stab the Justice Department in the back. Just as “everyone” was ratcheting up the claim that there was no evidence of any wrongdoing by “anyone”, Miss Goodling went and screwed things up royally by loudly and publicly taking the Fifth.

Subsequent developments have been interesting, to say the least:

The House Judiciary Committee voted to give Goodling immunity from prosecution for her testimony.

Before it could go forward, the offer had to be reviewed by the Justice Department to make sure it did not interfere with any criminal investigations.

Before you could say “Could there be a clearer case of conflict of interest?“, and just as Goodling’s lawyer said that “Goodling would agree to testify under such a deal”, the “Justice” Department announced that Goodling was now the subject of a criminal investigation.

Dowd contends that “the Justice Department … is powerless to block the congressional grant of immunity”, but like much of what Dowd says, that may just be hot air.

At this stage, what do you suppose Monica Goodling is thinking and feeling?

Initially, she thought they might cheerfully stab her in the back. So she took steps to protect herself. And they stabbed her in the back right away, to strip away that protection. I imagine she must be running pretty scared right now. I imagine that some pretty serious sobbing may have gone on late last week, in private. Of course, Monica is a pretty serious believer (or claims to be). And we do all know that “vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord”. But that hasn’t stopped a lot of very devout believers in the past from deciding that maybe the Lord needs a little help from time to time when it comes to this whole vengeance thing.

My guess would be that, at this point, this die-hard is spoiling for some vengeance.